Vietnam Adventure – Day 2 @ SINGAPORE

Day Two began the way all good luxury holidays should.

Standing outside the Grand Club Lounge at exactly 7:00am, waiting for the doors to open.

We may have been the first guests in.

No shame.

The breakfast spread was magnificent. Alan loaded up with eggs, toast and smoked salmon, while Rowena opted for eggs on toast. Around us was just about everything you could imagine. Fresh fruit, cereals, pastries, cheeses, cold meats, congee, noodle soup, dim sum and enough food to keep a small village going for a week.

Needless to say, we did our best.

Breakfast: 10/10

After spending a respectable amount of time stuffing our faces, we consulted Google to solve the next challenge.

Where do you watch Australia play Paraguay at 10 o'clock in the morning? Most sports bars in Singapore don't open until midday, which wasn't going to help. After a bit of searching we found what is apparently the unofficial Australian embassy in Singapore—the Boomerang Bar down at Robertson Quay—which opens at 6am for major sporting events.

Perfect.

A quick Grab ride later and we arrived about an hour before kick-off. The place was already buzzing. Reserved signs covered most of the tables, but one couple from Perth, who had clearly started celebrating well before breakfast, kindly invited us to join their table.

Legends.

The match itself...

Well...

Let's just say Australia got the result they needed.

It certainly wasn't a classic. In fact, it was probably one of the more forgettable games of football we've watched in quite a while. But a win's a win or a draw is a draw, whatever you want.

The only real shock of the morning came when the beers arrived. Twenty Singapore dollars a beer.

Twenty!

After a couple of beers and one shandy, the travel budget had taken a noticeable hit.

The football may have been slow, but the bar tab wasn't.

By around 1pm we'd had enough football and enough expensive beer, so we headed back to the Grand Hyatt.

The temperature by now was climbing into the low 30s with humidity somewhere around "walking through warm soup."

Time for the pool.

The Grand Hyatt has two enormous pools.

One is the family pool.

The other is the Wellness Pool, blissfully free of kids doing cannonballs every thirty seconds.

Guess which one we chose.

https://video.wixstatic.com/video/7a4d8d_4451f22a67904dd69108482fb1773034/1080p/mp4/file.mp4

We spent the next couple of hours floating around, sitting in the bubble seats, enjoying the spa jets and generally pretending we didn't have a care in the world.

It was magnificent.

Pool: 10/10

By about 2pm we wandered back upstairs, had a shower and prepared ourselves for the next complimentary event of the day.

Afternoon tea.

Now, compared to breakfast, this was probably the weakest offering from the Grand Club. A few finger sandwiches, cakes and pastries. Nothing wrong with it. Just nothing particularly memorable either.

Still, free egg mayonnaise sandwiches somehow taste better than purchased ones.

Afternoon Tea: 6/10

At 3pm sharp we made our way downstairs to the Martini Bar for Happy Hour.

Now we're talking.

Alan decided it would be rude not to sample the menu and successfully worked his way through four different martinis.

Purely for research purposes, of course.

Rowena took the more refined approach with a glass of Moët & Chandon.

Initially we attempted to have a sophisticated conversation. That lasted about five minutes.

Then we both found ourselves doom-scrolling through our phones in silence.

After another five minutes we looked at each other and agreed this was probably not the best use of a holiday.

So out came the cards.

For the next couple of hours we played cards, laughed a lot and wondered why we'd ever stopped doing it. Sometimes the simplest things end up being the most enjoyable. Oh Alan won! Just saying.

At 5:00pm sharp we headed back to the Grand Club for evening cocktails. We actually arrived about half an hour early and had great fun watching seagulls (not us of course) hanging around the room, watching the staff transform the lounge from afternoon tea into what could only be described as an all-you-can-eat feast while not wanting to be seen as over eager.

The spread was extraordinary.

Dumplings.

Noodles.

Fish curry.

Prawn curry.

Cold meats.

Cheeses.

Salads.

Desserts.

Cakes.

Fresh fruit.

And unlimited wine, beer and sparkling.

Honestly, there was absolutely no reason to leave the hotel for dinner. This was dinner. And it was excellent.

Grand Club Evening Cocktails: 11/10

By around 7pm we'd reached the point where the combination of food, martinis, bubbles, jet lag and tropical heat had finally caught up with us.

We wandered back to our enormous suite.

I think Rowena was asleep by about 7:35pm.

I'm not sure she even hit the pillow before she was gone.

As I write this, it's now 5:30am, the following morning and Vietnam awaits.

Hopefully with cheaper beer.

See you tomorrow.